Research Report for Social Media Research Project

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- This research report should describe the research project you conducted as a group in this class

- The report should follow the general structure and format of an APA research paper

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Option 1

Write the research report as a group and submit one report for the group. Everybody will receive the same grade

Option 2

Turn in your own write-up of the research project

This paper needs to be ready for peer review in class on April 5th. Suggestions made by your classmates can be incorporated into the paper you submit here for a grade.

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Components of the research paper

Title page

The title of your report

Your group

The name of everybody contributing to the report

These are the people who will receive the grade for the submitted report

Introduction

General question

Tell me the psychological phenomena your research examines

This will be different from the specific question addressed in the study

Importance of question

Tell me why it is important to know more about this phenomenon

Existing research

Read at least three articles on this topic

Use information from the articles to tell reader what is known about the phenomena

Tell me how your research will add to what is known

Tell me why this is important

This is different from telling me why it is important that we know more about the general phenomenon being studied. It tells me why it is important to examine the specific aspects of the phenomenon that were addressed by your research

Tell me how your research addresses this gap in knowledge

Specific hypothesis of study being examined

Methods

Participants

Who participated in your study?

What were the relevant characteristics of the participants?

Stimuli

What did you use as the stimuli?

How did you choose or create the stimuli?

How did you control for potential extraneous variables?

If you used existing data and performed a content analysis on the data, this is the place to describe how you made your observations and criteria for content analysis

Procedure

How did you assign participants to conditions or choose your sample for observation?

If you used counterbalancing, this is the place to describe it.

What did the participants experience when they were in your experiment?

What did you tell them to do?

In what way were they supposed to respond?

What was the nature of the data you collected from each participant?

Results

Description of the results by condition

Means, st. dev. for ratio/interval data or frequency and percentages for nominal data

Relevant tables/graphs summarizing results

What do the results say about your hypothesis?

Discussion

Description of the results in terms of the research question

In your opinion, did the results support your hypothesis?

Why or why not?

Integration with existing research

What does your study add to the existing literature?

What are the implications of your study?

How valid and generalizable are your findings, and what are the limitations?

What do you have to say about the wider implications of your results?

Reference section

Alphabetized listing of all the sources of information on which you drew for the study.

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- Your paper should be at least five pages long, double-spaced (not counting the title page, reference section, or end material).

You will not lose points if it is any shorter than five pages but it is unlikely that you can address the aforementioned points in less than five pages.

- Please do not turn in a paper that is more than ten pages long (double-spaced).

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Your research paper will be graded on the following:

- Does your paper contain the appropriate sections?

- Are the sections organized and formatted in a manner appropriate for a psychology research paper?

- Do you use citations correctly?

- Is the appropriate information addressed in each of the sections?

- Is the description of the research clear, concise, and well-organized?

- Based on your description alone, would I be able to understand what it was that you did, why you did it, how you did it, what you found, and your conclusions?

- Are your conclusions justified given your results?

- Quality of the writing

- Spelling, grammar, appropriate use of words, proofreading